


Another Room

by summerstorm



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: Community: femslash09, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-03
Updated: 2009-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Sure, I'll have the futon ready," Tyra said, and Lyla felt like she was in high school again, but in a completely different way than high school had ever been for her. </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [presentpathos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/presentpathos/gifts).



> For present_pathos in the femslash09 challenge.

The first time Lyla's dad got arrested for getting into a fist fight after Lyla left for Vanderbilt, Billy was the one who called her, the one who made sure her dad was fine, and the one who called her again when things were cleared up. She stayed on the phone with Mindy for thirty minutes, and they ended up talking about Billy's shop and Tim and how he might actually make something of himself, and Lyla felt like she'd never left Dillon, like she was still in high school and had another whole year ahead of her. The smoky screen shattered in the morning, though, thankfully, once she'd had a shower and tied her hair up in a ponytail.

The second time Lyla's dad got into trouble with the law—he had to testify in a prostitution case of some sort; Lyla didn't even want to know, and was grateful to Billy for shunning her from all the details—Tim had been going through a rough couple of weeks, driving back and forth to Dillon and raiding Billy's fridge, and Lyla stayed on the phone with Mindy for over an hour while Billy had a shouting match with Tim in the background. They talked about anything but the Riggins boys, and Lyla told Mindy about her classes, trying her best to simplify everything without dumbing it down, and she wasn't sure Mindy absorbed most of it, but there was something liberating about talking like that to someone like this; it made things clearer.

Then Tim sobered up and drove to see Lyla for the weekend, and Lyla felt like she _had_ left Dillon, like she really wasn't in high school anymore. Tim started doing better in school after that, and Lyla shattered the rest of her doubts talking to him.

Her dad's legal incidents stopped around that time. Mindy called Lyla once and Lyla found out her dad's stability had everything to do with how Billy had been keeping an eye on him at Tim's request, and then Mindy mentioned her sister and how well she was doing at UT, and it was easy to slip into a more positive type of conversation, one where Mindy laughed about Tyra having bought a pencil skirt but then sounded really proud about how well things had been going for her and how much she loved college and living out in Austin and how she'd only felt stupid once or twice asking simple questions but she hadn't even been the only one who'd had those doubts, and Lyla found herself feeling curious about the things that Mindy glossed over, and a little proud of Tyra, too, by proxy.

That, in addition to the quiet period of time her dad had had, made Lyla feel guilty about not keeping him—and her mom, too—up to date on what was going on in her life, so she started gushing over her material over the phone to her mom, and complaining about a TA and some of the classrooms to her dad. She tried to switch things up, but she hadn't gotten over how bad her dad had screwed up and she couldn't gather the excitement to talk to him about the good things—it would feel like she was thanking him for them when all he'd done was make a lot of mistakes and only rectify maybe half of them, and not even in their entirety.

Still, she felt it was partly her fault when Billy told her her dad had climbed on a bar stool and fallen down and broken something—something that belonged to the bar, not to his body—and had to pay for the damages. They hadn't taken the case to court, but it was difficult to concentrate on college in Tennessee when her dad kept getting into trouble back in Texas. Lyla had always been the kind of girl who could focus her energy onto more productive matters, though, so during that semester, her dad's screw-ups were something of a blessing. She couldn't go back, not when her tuition had been covered by money that didn't directly belong to her, not when she was holding a part-time waitressing job because she needed it, so instead she did her best to stay alert, detached; she read and wrote and made herself useful to her own cause, and then she had a long, fruitful conversation with the dean of students about taking a semester off and fixing her family problems and starting over on the right foot.

"You're not leaving college for Riggins," her dad said, eyes wide in outrage, when she told him over Christmas break. "Do you have any idea what I've been through to get you where you are right now?"

Lyla breathed in deep and held back the urge to point out he was the one to blame for all of this. "I'm not leaving college," she said instead, "and this has nothing to do with Tim. You need to get your life in order, and I can help you with that, and then next fall I'll go back to Vanderbilt—I've talked to them already, they're not giving away my spot or anything if I test well, and there's no reason why I shouldn't test well—so just let me do this. For me. I need to know you're okay."

"I'm fine, baby," her dad said. "Honestly. You're gonna go back to Vanderbilt after the holidays and stay there 'til the end of term and enjoy your dream, and that's that."

"You're not _fine_, you could've broken your spine or something last month," she pointed out.

"That was an _accident_, Lyla," her dad said. "I just got things going well for me again, and a big part of that is knowing you're doing well in Tennessee," he said earnestly, then smiled and added, "even if I have to call your mom to get the good parts."

So that really was that, and Lyla went back to Vanderbilt, and did exceptionally well on her exams, and then the whole long distance thing caught up with her and Tim and she thought again of going back to Dillon, but she'd already signed up for her classes and they were really exciting and Tim and her, they'd made it through worse; they could make it through this too.

Except Tim didn't seem to have that much faith in them, because after a while Mindy called Lyla to tell her that Tim had come by Dillon that weekend, and he'd been drinking and kept hitting on Tyra even though Tyra was _not_ interested, and then at Mindy's baby shower he'd been hitting on underage Panthers cheerleaders, and Tyra had asked Mindy to give Lyla a heads-up and maybe ask her to please control her man.

Tim was too out of Lyla's control to be her man anymore, she thought, and broke up with him.

It wasn't just like that, of course—there was more to her decision than some ridiculous gossip. They really hadn't seen each other much, and they seemed to have been working harder on finding excuses to avoid dealing with their relationship either way than they'd worked on maintaining it alive, and Lyla was having fun at Vanderbilt and there was a double birthday party at her dorm that Saturday and she thought that, well, maybe now she could have the full college experience.

She didn't expect the full college experience to involve making out with her very blonde, very female RA until she (the RA) passed out from drunkenness, or said RA going down on her (Lyla) in the morning and then lending Lyla designer clothes so Lyla wouldn't have to do some kind of walk of shame afterwards, though Lyla still felt terribly embarrassed about it all, and couldn't talk without blushing to anyone who knew for a month.

Lyla hadn't been on the rebound in forever, not really, not the kind of rebound where there really is no one to fall back on—she'd had Jason and she'd had Tim and they kind of overlapped at all times—so this was new for her, and it also was new in that she'd never really thought about the possibility. She could have brushed it off, forgotten about it—she wouldn't have told her family, because she didn't know for sure, or Tim, because it seemed like that'd be rubbing it in his face, but then Mindy called to tell her about how life with a baby was going and then she had to go feed said baby, and she put Tyra on the phone.

"So how's college treating you, Garrity?" Tyra asked, and it hit Lyla that she couldn't ask Tyra the same question because she already knew—well, basically everything major. Everything Tyra'd told Mindy, because Mindy didn't really have a brain-to-mouth filter, not even over the phone.

"Good," she said, "it's good," and then she grimaced and figured, who better than Tyra Collette to blurt this out to, "I slept with my RA the other day."

Tyra sounded like she'd just choked on her beer, which made Lyla smile. "Lyla Garrity, my word," Tyra said dramatically after coughing for a few seconds. "Why on earth would you tell me that?"

"I'm sharing," Lyla lied. "I already know everything about your conquests from your sister, so I'm paying you back for all those—hours of denial-shaped entertainment."

"You don't know everything," Tyra commented offhandedly.

"But neither do you," Lyla said, "the RA was a girl."

"You're living in an all-girl dorm, of course it was," Tyra said, and Lyla raised an eyebrow, because living in an all-girl dorm didn't mean boys weren't allowed at parties, and Tyra went on, "Mindy tells me stuff too. But if you think that's going to scandalize me, you gotta try harder. It's not a college experience without some experimentation involved."

"Wait, you've done that too?"

"Fucked my RA? No," Tyra said, "because I don't have an RA. I have an apartment. With roommates. Slutty ones. It's pretty pathetic to be the saint, actually."

"_You're_ the saint?"

"In comparison. You know," Tyra mused, "you should come visit. You'd fit right in now, you—" Tyra took a few seconds to think it over, then muttered, "—hussy."

"Ha, ha," Lyla said flatly. "I'd actually like to see your apartment, though. And I haven't seen my dad in a few weeks, so I could just... take a roundabout or something. Crash at your place?"

"Sure, I'll have the futon ready," Tyra said, and Lyla felt like she was in high school again, but in a completely different way than high school had ever been for her.

Tyra was having a party when Lyla got to the building, which made everything less awkward than it would have been if the place had been empty or silent, and one of Tyra's roommates was a devout Mormon, which made for an interest topic of conversation after she'd gotten high enough not to yell. Lyla didn't get to pick apart the decoration or find comfort in the contrast between her somewhat depressingly white room in Vanderbilt and Tyra's apartment's disarray, because you can't judge a place by its party make-up.

Tyra didn't actually have a futon—one of her roommates did, but it was already occupied—so after a while of trying to mingle and hold inane conversations with drunk Physics majors, Lyla walked into the first room that didn't smell like a keg had blown up inside, and figured if she waited long enough someone would come in looking for something and tell her it was okay to sleep in there. She hadn't really seen Tyra, but she and Tyra had never seen each other much, so it didn't bother her. It actually felt good to know Tyra was out there, like Lyla hadn't exactly cut herself off completely from her life in Dillon, like there was a thread joining the dots and she still had the chance to jump either way whatever she did.

She switched on the light, and the place looked—orderly chaotic, somehow. Half the bed covers were on the floor, and there were clothes on a chair near the small window. The laptop sitting on the desk was shut but not off, and there were sticky notes plastered all over it. The beige walls held a few paintings and posters here and there—cheap Van Gogh reproductions, mostly, pretty decently arranged, and then a flier announcing one of Landry's shows, pinned to the wall right above a sunflower.

So this was Tyra's room, and that was Tyra standing in the doorframe, an amused smile playing on her lips. "See something you like?" she asked, though the question lost strength around the middle. Tyra had been sober when she'd met up with Lyla earlier that evening, but she was definitely halfway to drunk now, trying to keep a straight face and failing.

"You like Van Gogh now?"

"I like having walls that don't remind me of a madhouse."

Lyla smiled up at her, wondered if Tyra was aware of the irony in what she'd just said, and waited. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for—a green light, maybe.

"Oh," Tyra said suddenly, "if you need to get some sleep or whatever, you can take my bed. It's free of worms, I promise," and then she closed the door. From the inside. "Are you okay? I mean, I didn't know Lucy was throwing a party until yesterday, or I would've told you before you drove all the way here."

"It's fine," Lyla said. "I like parties."

Then Tyra noticed the glowing light on her laptop and walked over to the desk to switch it off, and when she turned around she was _right there_, and her hair was a little longer, a little darker, the only thing about her that was still perfect after spending two hours in that mob outside her room, and Lyla reached out to run her fingers through a lock, set it behind Tyra's ear.

"It looks good dark," she said, because it was weird to touch someone's hair for no reason, and she'd had a couple of beers since she'd got there. She didn't make a habit of drinking—drinking alcohol, that is—but she'd needed to drink _something_ and the kitchen was practically unaccessible, so she'd taken what she could get.

"It's light brown," Tyra pointed out, "emphasis on _light_."

"It's darker than last year," Lyla remarked, and Tyra shrugged with her mouth. "Was this part of the pencil skirt makeover?"

Tyra laughed, more honest than Lyla'd ever heard Tyra laugh, and then she said, "Mindy told you about the pencil skirts, did she," and Lyla nodded, wondering if maybe she should mock Tyra for it.

Then she took in Tyra's expression, though—the amused glint in her eyes, like she couldn't believe herself, and how her lower lip was sticking out a little, not in a retarded way, but as part of the remains of her smile—and it just felt _right_ to let her fingers brush the side of Tyra's face on the way from her ear, to cup her jaw. To lean in and kiss her.

"Garrity, what are you doing?" Tyra said, but didn't pull away.

Lyla shrugged and nibbled at Tyra's lip, licked the corner of her mouth.

"Are you sure that thing with the RA was experimenting?" Tyra asked, but let Lyla lick into her mouth for a second before getting an answer.

"Hmm," Lyla confirmed against her lips.

"So you need more of it?" Tyra asked, softer now. A little worried, maybe, and a little entertained. It was hard to tell what weighed the most for her with their faces so close together.

"Test came in positive," Lyla said, "and she wasn't even hot," _like you are_, she thought, but that wasn't why she was kissing Tyra—it was just a part of it—so she didn't say it. She just started another kiss, hoping Tyra wouldn't ask any more questions, would just pick up the proverbial ball and throw it back.

Tyra did.

It was the lack of a burdening seriousness, maybe, that made them start visiting each other. Tyra tried on her most outrageously posh outfits at Vanderbilt, and Lyla drove to smoky joints in Austin to hear obscure local bands play half sets for no one. It wasn't about seeing a boyfriend or, or watering the plant of friendship or whatever—it was about spare weekends with nothing better to do than make out with Tyra Collette under the watchful eye of bass players, or watch her try on new clothes until something clicked and she put her tank top and jeans back on only for Lyla to yank them off her two minutes later.

And then it was summer again, and the sun was high up in the sky, filling the air of Dillon with a sort of hazy melancholy, and her dad had managed to pull everything together, had even paid his brother a third of the money they'd borrowed from him, and it was like reaching a destination, one of the many destinations she'd have to get to in her life.

This time, though, Lyla felt like what really mattered wasn't whether she was in high school or college or grad school, Texas or Tennessee; what mattered was to keep moving forwards, always, looking forwards, always, and holding on to those things—and those people—that moved forward right along with you. It wasn't about leaving anyone behind; it was about furnishing your life, making it pretty, and keeping in mind that the things she didn't have space for now might fit in in a room she'd unlock in due course, at a later time.


End file.
